Posts Tagged With: Environment

First…Thank you Radiohead for your entire catalogue of music, and for the title of this blog post 😀

I have a slight addiction to working on jigsaw puzzles. Really CHALLENGING jigsaw puzzles – usually about 3000 pieces, but they have to be minimum 1500. Working on jigsaw puzzles allows my brain to work in a different, meditative, and creative way. I often come up with dharma talks or sequencing while puzzling! The one I finished this morning was 2000 pieces, but is of Monet’s Garden (pictured below), so it might as well have been 5000 pieces. Side note – Barnes & Noble carries a 5000 piece Ravensburger, my favorite brand (yes I have a favorite brand of puzzle), but it is like $85. I am obsessed, but not crazy – I refuse to spend this on a puzzle!

When I am working on a puzzle, and have been looking for a specific piece for a long time without success, I’ll start looking for something completely different. And then, all of a sudden I find what I was looking for in the first place, and it is usually, literally, right under my nose. Or, if I have been sitting in front of it for a while without finding any piece at all, I walk away and do something else. Then when I come back, I often find about 20 pieces immediately.

One of my teachers, Ruth, says that one of the results of a yoga practice is that your vision changes, and when you look at anything you are able to see the whole picture – the past, the present, and the future. You are able to see where things have come from and where they are going.

In our āsana practice, over time, you might realize that the poses we come into all link to each other, just like a puzzle, or that they strategically build up to a more challenging pose later on, the bigger picture. Or maybe you one day realize that all of the poses are exactly the same, just take on a different form! (The truly bigger picture!)

When you are faced with a challenging situation in your life, whether it is personal, or with another person, or more national or global, you may start to see how all of the actions, or karmas, you have taken so far have led up to this point, and how whatever you are about to put into the word as a reaction to this situation will lead to other future karmas. So how you act will affect not only you, and the immediate person/situation in front of you, but the greater world as well. Maybe if you start to look at the situation from a different perspective, from the other person’s point of view, or walk away for a bit and come back, you’ll get what you wanted in the first place, and all of the puzzle pieces fall into place…

Maybe your vision expands so much that, as Ruth says, when you are in the grocery store and you see the non-biodegradable plastic bags that are there for you to put fruit and vegetables in, you can see that they end up buried in the Earth, or in our oceans, and that this causes the Earth and oceans to become sick, and then all of the living begins on the planet become sick. Or when you look at paper plates, cups, napkins, etc., you can picture the trees they came from, and how when we cut down all those trees, it leads to global warming, because there are less trees to take in the carbon dioxide we are emitting, which they then turn back into oxygen, for us to breath, and also to go back into the atmosphere creating rain, which in turn allows everything to grow again. A lovely mandala of life.

The mysteries of the universe often feel like one big jigsaw puzzle, but if we pause for a moment and take it piece by piece, and in the process set an example for others to follow, then slowly, maybe over many lifetimes, the jigsaw will fall into place.

This past Sunday, September 21st, 2014, I joined 400,00 others in the People’s Climate March in NYC. It was the largest of it’s kind, and amazing that so many people care about the future of this Earth we live on. Unfortunately, it was covered by only one news network, and only for about 23 seconds.

People’s Climate March 2014

One of the reasons for the lack of coverage is very same reason why I marched: our major “environmental” organizations, like GreenPeace, 350.org, etc., refuse to acknowledge the biggest cause of our environmental decline: the animal agriculture industry. The farming industry in the United States essentially runs our government. This industry has so much power in our country, that even high profile people like former Vice-President Al Gore, are afraid to talk about it. In fact, animal rights and environmental activists are the #1 offenders on the FBI watch list, rather than the actual bad guys.

It is estimated that at the rate our population is growing and the amount our word eats animal based food, we will only be around another 50 years or so. In 50 years I will be 84…I’d like to see the world last a bit longer than that! The farming industry is not only affecting the air and water we need to survive, but also killing off our natural wildlife. If you get excited when you see a fox or bear while on a hike, you better take advantage of it now, because natural wildlife won’t be here much longer.

There are a few things you can do:

The first is to educate yourself: watch the movie Cowspiracy. The movie highlights the fact that the largest cause of environmental decline is being hidden by all major environmental organizations, and our government. You can learn more about it here: http://cowspiracy.com/.

#2: Eat a plant based diet. It is completely possible to live a healthy, happy life on a vegan diet. Even if you are pregnant and/or raising children. Milk produced by cows is for their calfs to grow up into big strong cows! And if you love ice cream and cheese, you can get amazing tasting nut based ice cream or tapioca based cheese – it tastes the same, I swear! And you don’t even have to eat soy if you don’t want to! Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga School, just released a new cook book called Simple Recipes for Joy. There are over 200 vegan recipes in the book, even things like meatballs and spaghetti and manhattan clam chowder! I happened to have helped make the food in pictures in the book and tested recipes before publishing! You can order it here: Simple Recipes for Joy

Please feel free to comment or ask questions. Here are some facts that are posted on the Cowspiracy website, all completely research based. I have a copy of the Cowspiracy movie if you are in the NY area and want to borrow it.

LOVE, PEACE & VEGETABLES!

FACT CHECK

Director’s Note:

The science and research done on the true impacts of animal agriculture is always growing. The statistics used in the film were based off the information below.

We will continually update this list with further resources as they become available.

Although there may be fluctuations in numbers from year to year and from researcher to researcher, the fact remains that animal agriculture, as a whole, requires tremendous amounts of resources and is a leader in environmental degradation.

Animal agriculture is responsible for 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation combined. [i]

Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.

Jacobson, Michael F. “More and Cleaner Water.” In Six Arguments for a Greener Diet: How a More Plant-based Diet Could save Your Health and the Environment.
Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006.

1,000 gallons of water are required to produce 1 gallon of milk.

5% of water in the US is used by private homes.
55% of water in the US is used for animal agriculture.

Jacobson, Michael F. “More and Cleaner Water.” In Six Arguments for a Greener Diet: How a More Plant-based Diet Could save Your Health and the Environment. Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006.

Every minute, 7 million pounds of excrement are produced by animals raised for food in the US.
This doesn’t include the animals raised outside of USDA jurisdiction or in backyards, or the billions of fish raised in aquaculture settings in the US. [v]